


The Story In Question

by sinead



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canadian Shack, M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:04:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinead/pseuds/sinead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur, Eames, and a Canadian Shack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Story In Question

**Author's Note:**

> [I was incepted](http://bayleaf.dreamwidth.org/222382.html) with this story by bayleaf.

The first thing that Arthur didn't like about this job was the clothes he had to wear.

"It's a fan convention, darling," Eames said. "If you show up in Dior Homme, you're not going to blend." Arthur gritted his teeth and mentally cast himself back to his high school years, when he had a brief fling with Dungeons & Dragons, and had also played a fair amount of video games. He was wearing ill-fitting jeans and carrying the PASIV in a backpack. Eames had chosen t-shirts for both of them, and now Arthur's chest was proclaiming One does not simply Telnet into Mordor. ("Perfect," Eames had said. "It's practically your motto anyway, and it's never a good idea to wear a t-shirt one doesn't believe in.") Eames' shirt had a picture of a police call box on it. After he had explained the reference (in exhaustive detail), Arthur had pointedly asked him if that meant he believed in Time Lords.

"Oh, absolutely," Eames said cheerfully. His t-shirt was so well-worn that Arthur strongly suspected it was actually his. This suspicion was in no way undercut when Eames insisted that they visit the dealers' rooms, and spent a long time checking out the tables where vendors were offering cosplay paraphernalia.

"Research, pet, is a forger's best friend," he said when Arthur complained. The place was packed with hundreds of people, many of whom were in costume. Arthur had already been poked by a woman wearing metal breastplates with pointy nipples, a man wearing giant pointy metal claws, and someone of undetermined gender carrying a pointy metal shield. There was a lot of pointy metal around. This was the second thing that made him uneasy about this job.

The third thing was the client. Or clients, actually.

"We represent a consortium of people who are strongly interested in this information," the woman said. She was middle-aged and her clothes were nondescript, but her eyes were sharp as daggers and she talked like the movie version of a CIA agent. Her equally sharp-eyed companion was entirely silent, and carried a canvas shopping bag. She described the job and the mark, and then offered them a generous fee, which it turned out was in the canvas shopping bag. There was a pregnant pause while Arthur frantically tried to remember the last time that a client had paid him in cash, and Eames looked perversely charmed. The silent companion finally spoke up.

"We've heard a few rumors about the specialized work you can do." She coughed delicately and added, "--read them, actually, online." Arthur glanced at Eames-- _online?_ \--and Eames shrugged minutely. She leaned forward and said in a low tone, "We'd really like you to plant the overwhelming inspiration in her psyche to _finish the story_." The last three words were said with what sounded like lethal intent.

"Fucking finally," the other woman muttered.

Arthur understood something about the power of narrative resolution--after all, dreamsharing was basically, "we set up the situation and outline the plot, the mark fills in the characters and writes the dénouement"--but the clients' request seemed a little insane to him.

"Oh, I don't know," Eames said thoughtfully, when the two of them were alone and discussing whether to take the job. "I had to read The Mystery Of Edwin Drood in school, and now Charles Dickens occasionally shows up among my projections." Arthur had sometimes wondered about that old-fashioned looking guy with the frizzy beard, whom he'd seen once or twice when Eames was the dreamer. Eames continued, "I always have to ruthlessly suppress the impulse to kick his ample Victorian ass until he coughs up the conclusion. I think we should take it; it should be simple, it's good money, we don't have anything else on at the moment."

So, they took the job. And now they were on the first level of the dream, in a giant hotel with thousands of people, and Arthur was getting poked--this time, by a man with pointy ears who was carrying a long staff with a half-moon shaped blade on one end--while Eames cooed over a table of cobbled-together junk labelled "STEAMPUNK". Then Arthur spotted the mark. She was standing at the information booth, intently studying one of the printed convention programs, and seemed to be making notes in the margins.

"Heads up," he said. "We're on."

*****

Snowshoes, Arthur was realizing, required a little practice, but he was finally getting the hang of them. A short distance ahead of him, he could see the mark chugging purposefully along--she seemed to have no trouble adapting to the snowshoes--and a short distance ahead of her was Eames, in the guise of the moderately famous actor whom research showed would be an irresistible lure. All of them were bundled up, puffs of their breath steaming up into the cold blue sky. Eames, and then the mark, crested a ridge and vanished from sight. Arthur hurried to catch up and saw a cabin-like building, small and slightly ramshackle, with snow piled against its sides. There was smoke pouring from the chimney. Eames and the mark were heading toward it; Eames put on a burst of speed and when he was close to the building, paused, turned, and struck a heroic pose, looking off into the distance. Arthur could clearly see the moderately famous actor's handsome profile in stark relief against the snow. Then Eames ducked around behind the shack. Arthur hung back to watch as the mark followed and circled the shack herself, eventually coming back into view alone. Despite the parka and knitted hat obscuring her outline, Arthur could sense her frustration as she looked wildly around. She hesitated by the door of the shack and finally opened it and went inside.

When Arthur reached the shack a couple of minutes later, Eames popped out from around the corner and joined him.

"Forged a snowman," Eames said, in response to Arthur's questioning look. "She was so intent on finding His Nibs, she never even glanced at it. Me."

"Nice," Arthur said. Eames grinned at him, probably about to say something flirtatious and annoying, but Arthur cut him off by carefully cracking the door and making a shushing gesture. The door opened into a tiny vestibule. There was a pair of snowshoes dripping against the wall. There were three other doors--two on either side, and one directly in front of them. The two of them slipped inside and stood for a moment, listening. Compared to the outside, it was very warm. Arthur pulled off his knit cap and his gloves.

"Arthur, you have hat hair," Eames whispered. "I never thought to see this day. It's adorable." His cheeks were ruddy, and his eyes were bright with evil glee when Arthur glared at him. They were silent for another thirty seconds.

"What do you think," Arthur murmured, "door number one, two or three?"

Eames replied, "Number one, I think," and cautiously turned the knob on their left.

The room was improbably cozy, with a fire in the stone fireplace and the smell of freshly made tea. There was a table in the center with a large shiny laptop perched on it; the mark sat before it in a chair, typing rapidly. She glanced up at them briefly.

"You two are cute, but I'm in the middle of something else right now," she said, her gaze returning to the laptop, her fingers never ceasing their headlong rush across the keys. Arthur felt slightly disconcerted by this bizarre dismissal. He and Eames hovered at the door. "Seriously," she continued, without looking up, "go next door and play, or something. I'll get to you eventually."

"Certainly," Eames said, and pulled Arthur along with him as he backed out the door.

"Well, that was interesting," he said once the door was closed. Arthur could still hear the faint sound of typing. "Do you suppose she was working on the clients' goods?"

"Yes, I think so," said Arthur slowly. "She's pretty obsessed with that story; most of her journal postings are about the pain of writer's block. I think we'll just have to wait her out for a bit, and then take a look at the computer."

"In that case, let's find somewhere comfortable to wait," Eames said. He lead the way across to the opposite door, and opened it. Inside was a room that more closely resembled the shack's exterior style, rough-hewn and simply furnished. There was a large wooden bed piled with quilts against one wall. There were also two men, standing in the middle of the room and kissing passionately. They seemed completely oblivious to Eames and Arthur at the door as they broke apart and began pulling frantically at one another's clothes. They froze, disappeared, and reappeared on the bed, now naked--still oblivious--and writhing against one another. They froze and disappeared again, and when they reappeared, the dark haired one was on top this time. Arthur swallowed; Eames seemed ready to settle in and enjoy a little spot of voyeurism, but Arthur didn't want to take the chance that their presence would interrupt the mark's creative flow. He had to give Eames' elbow a sharp tug to budge him.

Out in the vestibule, Arthur said, "Bingo." He was sure that the two men were the main characters of the story in question; one of them looked almost exactly like Eames' forgery of the moderately famous actor. Then, no longer distracted by the hot man-on-man action, incredulity swept through him, and he said, "The amazing finale everyone is waiting for is _fucking_?"

Eames said, "Darling, I always knew you were a closet romantic. I'm sure some tender words are exchanged. Eventually." Arthur was about to protest that that was not at all what he meant, when Eames swept them both through the remaining door.

It was a very large room, shadowy and filled with a conglomeration of things: various kinds of furniture, consoles with a lot of blinking lights, an old black four door sedan, every kind of weapon from a broadsword to an Uzi, television cameras, boxes labelled "toys, vibr, dild, L&C"--all cheek-by-jowl in a cross between a garage sale and a badly organized movie set. There was no one else in the room, as far as Arthur could see; the walls receded into a kind of misty darkness.

"So, larger on the inside than the outside," Eames said. He had already started to thread his way among the piles of stuff, interestedly poking into some of the boxes.

"Don't kid yourself that I'm not taking note of every sign of your geeky fanboy tendencies, Eames," Arthur said. He hefted the Uzi. Unloaded. Perhaps there was a box labelled "ammo" someplace.

"I never kid myself about you, Arthur," Eames said, and then he was beside Arthur, nosing against his ear. His cheeks were still a little cold from the outside, but his lips and breath against Arthur's neck were warm. Arthur quickly set the Uzi down. "What do you say, pet? Literature is so inspirational."

Arthur turned, wormed his hands under Eames' parka into the fiery heat along his sides and kissed him. He thought of the two men in that room, flickering in and out in response to keystrokes, clutching and gasping, and he leaned hard into Eames' solidity. Even in dreams, even in a different skin, Eames often felt like the only solid thing in a changeable universe.

"Yes, let's," Arthur said. "There must be a bed in here someplace."

"Actually," said Eames, "I'm quite sure there are any number of beds in here."


End file.
